Runaways

7. A TV-show

4 months later we found our selves at a small department in a small town called Ryder in North Dakota. It was a nice town with a small lake just east of it where we could enjoy peaceful moments.

What had happened was that we managed to escape but we did not make it to Canada. Our moms woke before it was scheduled and they alarmed the authorities, so the borders were closed. We had to stay put in the states.

When I contacted my father, he told us that we could not meet in person, but he had placed cash at a drop-off, so we had some funds to keep us selves out of sight for some time.

We got some false papers and rented rooms in various cities until we ended up in this small town where we got a job at a local supermarket. High school was out of the question because our papers would be investigated and they were not that good.

Life was not easy, but we managed. Our moms did their best in court and we were looking of at least a year living this way. We did not care. Anything was better than being locked up at Foreland Hamlet.

One evening we were enjoying ourselves in the sofa with the TV on, when Amber suddenly sat up.

“It is my mom!”

First I was confused then I looked at the TV and got a shock.

“Our moms were on TV.”

It was the Dr. Wits show and our moms were guests. At once I took the TV-guide and the show was called “Teen Runaways”.

We sat down and watched the show. The show had been on for a while and they had just escorted some poor girl off to a wilderness program wearing handcuffs, waist-belt and leg-irons. Our moms cried and told how we had skipped important and life-preserving treatment.

The doctor who were known for the sentence “You can not fix, what you do not acknowledge” stated that if he had a minor in the same situation, he would seek to that it would be a manhunt followed by an in-patient stay as fast as possible with no exception.

Our pictures were shown on the screen with phone-numbers so people could report us. Instinctive I knew that our time in Ryder were over. We need to move on within hours.

When the show was almost over, Dr. Wits introduced his detective R. Mortis and told the audience that he would send a follow-up show which could be about our treatment or as he pronounced it “The hunt for Peter and Amber”.

We packed our belongings. We could not use our car because the shop knew the license plate, so we walked down to the railway track and just outside the town where we did hide in some thickets until a freight train passed by which we boarded unnoticed.

We ended up near a place called New town. A truck driver allowed us to join him. We ended up in a godforsaken place called Bonnier’s Ferry, where we tried to find a place to live. Little did we know about this town bad reputation - During an entire generation, teenagers all over the country would have got cold sweat running down their back, if an adult mentioned this name in their presence.

But since 2005 where the chain of private teen prisons collapsed the town has been forgotten by most people.

We did not know anything about the history of this city, so we thought that we were safe. But they told about us and after 2 days the police entered our apartment and cuffed us with Mr. Mortis present.

The police turned us over to a teen transport company, which Mr. Mortis had ordered. The leather muffs they used were a little comfier than handcuffs. We were escorted to the studio where our moms waited for us.

We were expecting to be shown off on TV as a kind of price reward before being shipped back to Foreland Hamlet, but instead Dr. Wits told us that the court had ruled that we were going to live at a host family instead and attend normal High School. The TV-crew will visit us regularly throughout the coming months, so the viewers could follow our advances.

The host family was located in our hometown, so we could go back and attend High School, which were perfect. If the leather muffs had allowed us to hug, we would have done that. Instead we had to settle for a kiss.